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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27392419">Harph</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeltyRum/pseuds/MeltyRum'>MeltyRum</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman - All Media Types, Spider-Gwen (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:01:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,252</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27392419</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeltyRum/pseuds/MeltyRum</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Harvey Dent and Stephanie Brown, just big chilling.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Generic_Roleplay_Cyberpunk</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Harph</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">When the lights went on and he found her perched threateningly (and cape-swaddled) upon his couch, Harvey jumped so high that his hair nearly scraped against the ceiling. Maybe that was a bit rude— maybe even uncalled for—but hey, <em>Batman</em> was allowed to frighten people out of their skulls, so why couldn’t she? Although this was more “unpleasant surprise” territory than “frightening experience”… or so she hoped.</p>
<p class="western">“Hiya, Harv,” she greeted, as his recoil of shock and fear began to give way to relief, relaxation, and good humor, even if the adrenaline might continue to surge for a moment. She gave a toothy grin, pulling down her mask so he’d have the privilege of seeing it. “Sorry. Should I have said something when you came in?”</p>
<p class="western">“Could’ve sworn I asked you not to come here in uniform, Spoiler,” he remanded her, even as he tried his best to suppress a smile.</p>
<p class="western">“Well, yeah, but you weren’t at the Belfry tonight.”</p>
<p class="western">He let out a deep, satisfying little chuckle, walking a little bag of goodies over to his refrigerator with a grin. “Great point—you got me on my night off. Which makes me wonder what you want with me when I’m sure there’s someone perfectly capable working the controls at the Kate-Cave while I’m trying to soak in my leisure time.” As usual, he never sounded as annoyed as his words suggested he might be. Good old Harv!</p>
<p class="western">“Well, this is technically my free time, too, but… point taken; I’ll call ahead next time.” With much ado, Stephanie unfurled her cape and pulled back her hood as she began to make herself at home. “But this is partly a social call, too. And I was hoping to catch up on some of the goings-on with our friends in the cave; figured you would know more about that than Kate.”<br/>“I’m not so sure about<em> that</em>,” he murmured, peeling a beer out of his six-pack and opening it with a snap. He took a modest sip at the encroaching foam before dropping himself into the chair at his desk. No reason for him to stop whatever revelry he had planned—not on her account, anyway. “But okay,” he started, wheeling around to face her. “Now that the circumstances of your imposition are out of the way: what can I do for you, kiddo?”</p>
<p class="western">His smile was kind and curious and it was impossible for her not to try and mirror it. “There’s that new guy, right? Parker?”</p>
<p class="western">“Yep. Been in Gwen’s care, mostly—and I haven’t met him myself.” He regarded the advertising on the can as he gathered his thoughts. “Smart kid by all accounts, and everybody seems to like him, but I guess you don’t need me to tell you that being likable isn’t the best litmus for this kind of thing. Got in his first fight pretty recently, though.”</p>
<p class="western">“Oh yeah? How’d he do?”</p>
<p class="western">“Ended up in the hospital,” he replied, his smile growing a tad wry. “Was against a pretty big crew, though, and he only broke an arm or something, maybe some stitches—nothing too serious.”</p>
<p class="western">Nodding, Stephanie tried her very best not to remember her very own first fights… or her very own broken bones. “So they’re saying he’s got potential, I guess. Gwen and Damian, right? I suppose if there was a pair to please, that would be it—even if they don’t get the final word, exactly.”</p>
<p class="western">Harvey gave a knowing smile to nothing in particular, apparently rather amused with something. “And in turn, if Mr. Parker can handle those two, I’m sure he’ll do just fine. You ever play Beat Fighter, Stephanie?”</p>
<p class="western">Spoiler blinked at this pivot in subject. “Heard about it, but not yet. Why? Any good?”</p>
<p class="western">“Well, it <em>is</em>, but the reason I bring it up is because I happened to bump into him on ranked—Damian, I mean. Plays a mean Renji.” He smiled fondly as he reminisced, while keeping a careful eye on her in order to see how she might come to grips with this information.</p>
<p class="western">“Wow,” Steph replied dryly, all room for surprise or awe having been momentarily reserved for sarcasm. “That must have been tons of fun.”</p>
<p class="western">Harvey laughed. “Apparently he’s playing it for his boyfriend’s sake, but he already seems unstoppable. I like to think I’m better at the computer thing than he is, but… maybe I’m wrong. Anyway—Damian’s not too bad, just a little young and full of himself. We were all like that once upon a time, right?” asked <em>Harvey Dent</em>, a man who—as far as Stephanie could tell—had absolutely nothing in common with Damian… except apparently an affinity for competitive fighting games, of all things.</p>
<p class="western">“Yeah,” she began, trying her best to see things as charitably as Harvey could. “He’s… young.”</p>
<p class="western">Stephanie watched him stifle a chuckle. “What, you two don’t get along?” he asked, implying that Damian got along well with anyone.</p>
<p class="western">Still, she felt things were a bit more complicated than ‘not getting along’.</p>
<p class="western">“On the contrary: I think Damian appreciates that we know just where we stand with one another—and for the record, so do I. I just happen to think the ‘light touch’ style makes things worse with guys like him.” She smirked, rising up from her couch to help herself to his kitchen, since even a lukewarm cup of coffee from Harvey’s stale pot wasn’t likely to go amiss. “A tough kid can probably take a little tough love,” she added, looking through his cupboard for a novelty mug that would be <em>just </em>right.</p>
<p class="western">“Yeah, well… I guess appeasement doesn’t work for everyone,” he conceded, still amused with himself.</p>
<p class="western">“Honestly, I probably <em>do</em> have a better rapport with him than most others on the team.” She sounded disappointed. “In that we <em>have</em> a rapport, I mean.”</p>
<p class="western">Harvey held his silence for a brief moment. “There’s Gwen, too. Maybe you just attract the sour types.”</p>
<p class="western">“Hey! Gwen likes me. We’re… we’re friends,” she insisted, sounding a sight more doubtful than she intended.</p>
<p class="western">Harvey deigned to show mercy instead of arguing the point or—worse—asking for elaboration. “Well, speaking of Gwen, Damian, and our new spider boy, it’s not just those two who’re testing him. Kate went and spoke with him herself.”</p>
<p class="western">She blinked. “No way!”</p>
<p class="western">“Yep.”</p>
<p class="western">“So there’s no way he doesn’t know, at this point—if he’s as smart as everyone keeps saying, you know. She must be serious about him,” she observed, letting her gaze lose focus against the kitchen wall as she absently sipped from her mug. She couldn’t help noting the rather stark differences between Peter’s recruitment process and her own. They had<em> scouted</em> him. Best not contrast that with her own “process”, lest she bum herself out. “More serious than I would’ve thought, I mean.”</p>
<p class="western">His gaze lingered carefully on her, apparently having spotted something amiss and weighing the benefits of mentioning it. “I don’t think you’re wrong, but I also don’t think she’s come clean with him on everything just yet. Otherwise we could pay him a visit ourselves.”</p>
<p class="western">Stephanie smiled, despite herself. “That’d be fun. This is probably the first time we’ve had a copycat with webbing.” Yeah, imagine that: a family adoptee who’s already using all of his own gadgets and gear. She sighed into her mug; maybe Jason wasn’t the only one in the family with an inferiority complex. “On top of that, he’s just some clean-cut college guy, right? Maybe a better model of mental health than most of us.”</p>
<p class="western">“Guess so.” He turned away for a moment, so all she saw was the side of his face with the seam on it. “On the other hand, it’s possible he’s got his own secrets and skeletons. His parents are dead, for one thing—and I guess I don’t have to point out how familiar <em>that </em>setup sounds. At any rate, not every crime-fighter gets into the business because of the trauma. Or because their father got them into it.” He smiled and gestured to himself, as though citing a shining example.</p>
<p class="western">“You? No trauma?” she asked, mustering an ironic smile. “I know you don’t need me to remind you, Harvey, but you got your face melted off.”</p>
<p class="western">“Some of it,” he granted, in good humor that Stephanie was grateful for. “But I’ve got things under control—easy to keep it that way when you’re just sitting at a desk, besides. Point is: even if Parker is ‘perfectly adjusted’, I don’t think it’ll make him some kind of black sheep. Depending on your perspective, <em>everyone</em> is kind of a black sheep in the Batfamily… in their own way.”</p>
<p class="western">She gave this the ponderous consideration that it deserved, finding it difficult to disagree. If attaining the approval of everyone in the family is what made you a <em>white</em> sheep, then… it’s true that there weren’t very many of those, considering Kate and Bruce didn’t seem to approve of very much of anything. Black sheep weren’t likely to stand out if they composed nearly your entire herd, but here they were.</p>
<p class="western">“Oh yeah. Speaking of black sheep, what’s up with Red Hood’s runaways?”</p>
<p class="western">The man blinked, gears turning for a second as he tries to figure out what she was talking about. “Well, only one of them is Red Hood’s, but as far as I’m aware, she’s doing alright—laying low, and all that. What exactly did you want to know?”</p>
<p class="western">She replied with a lame little shrug. “I don’t know, I was just hoping you’d tell me about them, so stuff like… who are they?”</p>
<p class="western">“Ah,” exclaimed Harvey, the realization in his voice giving Steph the impression that she was even further behind on events than she thought. “Well, there’s Bruce’s would-be assassin—Cain—who seems to be doing alright. They’ve got her holed up at Bruce’s place for now, trying to ‘re-educate’ her.”</p>
<p class="western">Harvey must have taken note of Steph’s rising eyebrows, because he hastened to continue.</p>
<p class="western">“By that I mean just <em>educating</em>, I guess—teaching her the ins and outs of English, since she only knows some kind of esoteric construction that Damian just knows pieces of. Sounds like she’s been planning to get out of the assassination game for a while, though, so… assuming she’s sincere, <em>that</em> at least seems to be going well, and Bruce is trying to keep her father’s eyes off of her—you know the one. As for the rest, I don’t know much else about Cassandra Cain herself, personally: she’s young, quiet, apparently friendly enough, and—oh yeah—trained to kill all of us with her eyes closed, so let’s hope she’s not just biding her time,” he finished, smiling.</p>
<p class="western">“So… play nice with her, is what you’re saying.” She mirrored his smile with this summary.</p>
<p class="western">“Play nice,” he agreed, grinning. “Other than her, it’s the clone, Conner, and—as you said—Red Hood’s runaway, Cassandra Sandsmark. Rather than in the mansion, Bruce has those two sharing an apartment on one of his other properties. You could drop by to say hi, but Bruce is probably trying to distance them as much as possible,” he added, chuckling. “I’m guessing you generally know Sandsmark’s circumstances just from the news, so I won’t get into it too much. As for Conner, our current working suspicion is that he’s escaped from one of Luthor’s labs, although we don’t know how—for all we know, Luthor planned that himself. For now, we’re just seeing what we can do to keep him and the Cassandras out of the public eye.”</p>
<p class="western">“Wait a second.” Steph’s brow furrowed slightly as she chewed over the news, something about it beginning to bother her more and more. “This is all starting to sound a little too familiar: so Cassandra Cain is staying with Bruce in order to hide from her crazy assassin dad, and Sandsmark and Conner are laying low in order to hide from their crazy capitalist dads?”</p>
<p class="western">Harvey gave her an inquisitive look at this summation, thinking it over as he took another sip of his drink. “Not necessarily the way I would put it, but that sounds accurate to me. If we assume the worst, their parents all have reason to harm them—or control them, but… I repeat myself.”</p>
<p class="western">Stephanie sighed out of her nostrils, resisting the urge to roll her eyes as she briefly thought of her own father. “Yeah. Seems to be going around.” She set her mug into Harv’s sink, perhaps a little more firmly than she intended to.</p>
<p class="western">“’Least you’ve all got something in common,” observed Harvey, with just the barest tactful modicum of joviality slipping into his voice.</p>
<p class="western">“Guess so,” she replied, unable to suppress a smile even as she started to lift her mask back up. She would have to tell Harvey about Jason another day—in part because of the time constraints and in part because, well… she <em>did</em> make Jason a kind of promise.</p>
<p class="western">“Leaving so soon?” asked Harvey, rising to his feet and drawing near.</p>
<p class="western">“Yeah—have to give your day back to you, and I have a few stops to make before getting back home. Thanks for catching up, Harv.” At this, she leaned into his waiting arms and briefly returned his embrace. “I’ll make it up to you sometime.”</p>
<p class="western">He grinned. “Sure—on that note, do me a favor and pick up Beat Fighter. Would be nice to have a scrub to fight against to make myself feel better and all.”</p>
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